


Tabula Regulae

by devils_trap



Series: do not go near the Forest [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, i know where i'm going with this but will i finish it? who knows, i'm hoping to make this a series but i prob never will lol go emily, silent hill and the awakening inspired, this is tech preslash but definitely hints towards a greater scott/stiles thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-22
Updated: 2013-08-22
Packaged: 2017-12-24 08:19:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/937717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devils_trap/pseuds/devils_trap
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a copy of The Rules in every room of Shardpoint School for Boys, lest They be forgotten. It is wise to always keep Them in mind. They are carved into stone by the students themselves. Nothing good will come of forgetting, ignoring, or breaking Them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tabula Regulae

There is a copy of The Rules in every room of Shardpoint School for Boys, lest They be forgotten. It is wise to always keep Them in mind. They are carved into stone by the students themselves. Nothing good will come of forgetting, ignoring, or breaking Them.

They are not particularly difficult to follow, the Rules, but a constant, ever-present reminder cannot hurt. They are quite simple, really. 

In before Dark, bed by the Third Ring, do not look Them in the face, do not open The Door, do not go near the Forest, do not scream; Obey the Rules.

The Rules are reverently etched, by hand, into a thick slab of smooth, rectangular stone by the boys each year they are at Shardpoint. When the etchings are completed, they are taken into the Basement to be finished and polished by the Final Year students assigned to the Basement. Once a Final Year is assigned to the Basement, they do not talk much. But they do listen. They listen even better than they did Before.

Some of the etchings will go on to be mounted in a room of Shardpoint, retiring an etching made by students no longer attending the School. Others will go into storage, and will line the walls in great stacks.

If the etching does not meet Their standards, the slab is dropped on the backs of the student's hands from some distance above while the rest of the students watch. All must watch. The student is then given forty-eight hours to redo their etching, and if it is not satisfactory they get sent Away.

If it is satisfactory, the student will be taken aside to have their wounds dressed, and will return from the Nurse's office with a sweet of their choosing and bandages around their hands. They are not to talk about the Scars they come back with, and the others are not to ask, but it is hard to kill curiosity when your classmate mewls and weeps in his sleep for days After, fingers furiously tugging at the bandages around one or both wrists. It is best to let sleeping dogs lay.

There is a copy of The Rules in every room of Shardpoint School for Boys, lest They be forgotten. It is wise to always keep Them in mind. They are carved into stone by the students themselves. Nothing good will come of forgetting, ignoring, or breaking Them.

-

It's Scott McCall's rest period, and he can't find Stiles. He has looked in the Nurse's office, he has looked in the Mess, he has looked in the washrooms on three of the four floors of their school, but Stiles is nowhere to be found. All Scott has found are the pitying, scared shoulder shrugs of his classmates and the nausea rolling in his stomach.

Quietly Scott ascends the master stairwell in the heart of Shardpoint, lip clamped tight between his teeth. The stairwell is a beast of a thing, massive and winding and pristine, with steps made of thick, bright off-white stone. Each morning the Beginning Year students clean and dry it, and the smell of bleach-based product never truly leaves the area around the staircase. They keep it so clean you could probably eat off it, or at the very least see your reflection in it. When Scott catches a glimpse of his own reflection, pale and sweaty with fear rabid in his eyes, he quickly looks away and focuses on making it to the fourth floor. He doesn't let his shoes squeak or scuff the stone. 

Two and a half days ago had been their Evaluation Day. Stiles' etching hadn't been satisfactory. It had had a long, jagged scar across most of the bottom half. Stiles hadn't told him what had happened there, but he had fingered it anxiously up until it was his turn to be Evaluated. Then he looked everywhere and anywhere but the scar.

If Scott strains enough, he can still hear the crunching sound Stiles' hands had made when the Headmistress had dropped Stiles' etching. The fall had to have broken some of the delicate pieces of Stiles' birdbone hands and wrists, but Stiles worked through the pain for the forty-eight hours he was allotted, face ashen and sweaty and tear-stained, yet determined. His amber eyes had been alight with a feverish desperation that had changed Stiles' entire face, had twisted and bathed his profile in a harsh golden glow that made Stiles' face too thin, too old.

Scott had brought him his meals and had kept Stiles company when he could, had walked Stiles up all four flights of stairs to their room when Stiles was finally allowed to rest, though they did not talk. Scott did his arithmetic and Latin assignments to the _tnk tnk tnk_ of Stiles' tools against stone, and did his best to provide silent support while Stiles cried.

Stiles' forty-eight had ended in the middle of Scott's Latin class, almost four hours ago. 

Scott bites his lip as he reaches the landing of the top floor, the Dormitory, and slowly makes his way to the room he shares with Stiles Stilinski, Vernon Boyd, and Isaac Lahey. The room is cramped with the four of them in it, but it is neat, nearly sterile, and smells like laundry detergent and clean sweat. Directly across from the door is a large window, and it lets in muted, yellow-gray sunlight. Above the window there are symbols nailed into the wall, three ironwork circles each a foot across with intricate geometric patterns in their centers. All but the circle in the middle have inscriptions curling around their outside. The inscriptions are in a text Scott doesn't recognize.

Sometimes Stiles finds Scott during their meals, frantic and trying to keep it from showing too much, and tells him the patterns in the circles changed and the inscription flared, but he's never been able to prove it. Scott thinks he's been spending too much time staring at their arithmetic homework.

Their beds are each tucked in a corner of the room with a trunk at the foot of each. Scott's bed is tucked into the right corner nearest the door, and Stiles is diagonal from his in the far left corner.

Each boy has a desk to the side of his bed, and though they are allowed to keep things on their desks as long as they're kept tidy, the four desks are nearly identical.

Boyd's has a small, orderly collection of pastel origami cranes beneath the lamp, and sometimes he hums to himself and pretends they are sunbathing.

Scott has a slightly misshapen wooden wolf he sometimes uses as a paper weight. He whittled it himself in his second year at Shardpoint. He had cut his fingers all to hell before he got the hang of it, and some of the bloodstains hadn't come out of the wolf. His second endeavor at whittling had been better than his first, but he was still proud of his nameless figurine.

Stiles has a wrecked Sheriff's badge, beaten all to hell with a gaping bullet wound in the center. He had shown up at Shardpoint years ago with it, two months into the school year. He never said where it came from, not even to Scott.

On Isaac Lahey's desk, there's nothing but his lamp and his schoolwork.

Scott pokes his head into their room. His frown deepens when he finds Isaac dozing and Boyd making more cranes, but no Stiles. His bed is still perfectly made from this morning. Nothing on his side of the room looks any different, though on closer inspection the Sheriff's badge is gone.

“Have you guys seen Stiles?” Scott asks. He stands in the doorway with his hands fisted in his pockets. “I've looked everywhere.”

From his bed, Isaac stirs. He blinks blearily at Scott, dirty blonde curls unruly and in his face. Scott watches the question process in Isaac's expression. After a moment, he shakes his head. “Have you tried the Nurse?”

“Not there,” Scott answers. He appreciates the frown Isaac gives him, though it doesn't really help anything. The Nurse had been too busy attending to a boy with seizures to tell him where Stiles had gone. All she had said was, “Not here.” Which meant he could be around Shardpoint somewhere licking his wounds, or he could be Away.

Scott hopes he's not Away. 

Boyd is sitting at his desk, tongue sticking out just the slightest bit from between his lips. Boyd's desk is partially in front of the window with Stiles' about a foot to its side. The sunlight pouring in the room casts Boyd's face in a sickly yellow pallor. 

He looks up from the crane he's working on though his fingers don't stop their nimble work. From Scott to the window his gaze goes, though he says nothing. Boyd isn't a Final Year student but he does work in the Basement. He listens more than he talks, but even then, Boyd is helpful if you know what to look for.

Scott makes his way to the window and looks over Boyd's shoulder. Outside of Shardpoint are fields of flat, dying grass that go on and on in every direction until a ring of dark, dense forestry suddenly sprouts up from the earth. It surrounds Shardpoint's circular plot on every side, the Forest, an almost perfect circuit. Almost. There's a single road leading to and away from Shardpoint, and it bisects the ring of trees. Scott can barely make out the lampposts at the mouth of the road opening, standing a constant vigil. Always lit, though the road is usually only ever used at the end and the beginning of the year, to bring and take away students.

The road is just wide enough for a single car to travel to and from Shardpoint, and from this distance it makes the lights of the lamppost look like golden eyes staring at you from the darkness of the mouth of the Forest.

The grounds around Shardpoint are mostly vacant, but there is a duckpond in the back of the school in the center of the Great Porch, a dried-up pond, some dead or dying shrubbery, and a few large, mangled, dead trees dotting the landscape. There are no humans at the duckpond, but Scott can see a few of the geese that hang around. No Stiles there, but that's no surprise. He hates those geese.

“I don't—oh, oh, there he is!” Scott calls when he spots Stiles, tapping furiously at the glass pane of the window. “I'm gonna—go. Thanks, Boyd!”

As he scurries away, Boyd huffs around the corner of his smirk, and gets up to wipe Scott's smudgy fingerprints off the glass.

-

Most of the trees spotting the grounds are too weak and dead to interest the students at all, but there is an old willow tree by the dried-up pond that has thick enough branches to support a swing. As Scott runs toward it, eating up the distance with long, powerful strides, he can see Stiles pumping his legs, sending himself higher and higher. When he comes to a stop at Stiles' side, his face is splotchy with exertion, but he's happy. Happy Stiles got his etching to be satisfactory. Happy that Stiles didn't get sent Away.

Stiles sails forward and backward over the pockmark that is the old, dried-up pond. His cheeks are red, red like Scott's, but he does not look happy. His hands are fat with layers of bandaging, and he awkwardly holds the chains of the swing with his wrists. Occasionally, he hisses in pain, but he does not stop.

“Stiles!” Scott calls once he's gotten his breath back. “Stiles! Stiles?”

On the third call, Stiles notices he's there and startles in the swing. He gradually comes to a stop, though he does not look at Scott. He stares at the dirt like it holds the world's secrets. Like it might just open up and swallow him whole, like that's something he wants.

“Stiles?” Scott asks. He frantically looks Stiles over, winces in sympathy when he gets to Stiles' bandaged hands. Other than that, Stiles looks no worse for wear, but Scott knows failing your Evaluation is hard. Isaac failed his very first one, and after getting it right the second time, he had nightmares for weeks.

“Hey,” Stiles whispers. He finally looks up at Scott, and the pain in his eyes breaks Scott's heart. Unconsciously, Scott steps closer. “Satisfactory, hell yeah.” Stiles gives him a watery smile and viciously rubs at his eyes with the bandaged jut of his wrist. Something gold shines in the grip of Stiles' other hand. Scott assumes it's the badge.

Without talking, they come together and sit side by side at the base of the dead willow tree, knees pulled to their chests. In the distance, the sun is beginning to set. They can't be out here much longer.

“Aren't you gonna ask how it was?” Stiles head lolls back against the trunk of the tree as he looks at Scott. He offers him a smile that doesn't reach his eyes, and sits on his face more misshapen than Scott's wolf.

“I was gonna wait for you to tell me.” He laughs softly as Stiles' rolls his eyes.

“It sucked. I don't ever wanna go through that again,” Stiles whispers, and his voice carries more seriousness than Scott is used to hearing from him. Stiles doesn't openly break Shardpoint's rules, but he does try the patience of every adult in the place.

“Your etching was perfect except for that scar. What the hell happened there anyway?” Scott watches as Stiles clams up. He sucks his teeth and knocks his shoulder against Stiles'. “You can tell me, y'know. Anything, I mean.” He pointedly doesn't look at the badge.

For a long moment, they're both silent. Scott watches Stiles as he plays with the mangled badge in his grip the best he can with his hands bandaged. The gauze around his right wrist is stained with drying blood. Scott tries not to stare at where he knows there's a Scar. “Jackson was being an asshole. I don't think he actually meant to...do what he did, but he hit my tablet a few times and then it cracked. God I could kill him.” He crushes the badge in his grip and whines as the pain in his hands surges anew. “I didn't tell Them that he did it, but I've got a feeling They already know.”

Scott makes an inquisitive sound, though he's dubious. Stiles is always thinking things about Shardpoint he can't prove. The place is extreme, Scott will give him that, but Stiles seems to think there's something supernatural going on.

“When the Nurse let me go, the Headmistress was walking Jackson down the hall towards the Basement,” Stiles whispers.

“He's going Away?” Scott swallows hard. The Basement isn't just a place for the Final Year students to work, or for students assigned early like Boyd. The Basement leads into the area the students call the Away, a type of solitary confinement. It's more confinement than it is solitary, as you're never truly alone when you're Away. The students that come back from Away are...different. 

Quiet, vacant, pliable.

“I didn't say anything but I _know_ They know. This whole place...” Stiles throws up his hands in frustration, then scrubs at his eyes again. “This fucking place, man. No one but students come in or out. _No one_. We never get supply trucks, we never get new teachers. And the guys that leave _never come back_. Scott, this place is fucking weird.” Stiles continues to scrub at his eyes, rubbing his bandages against his face until Scott stops him. Under his eyes are dark smudges of color and abrasions from the friction. “I don't remember anything about myself from before I got here. It's like...I got amnesia and ended up here. Do you remember anything? About Before?”

Scott shifts in the dirt and stares at the horizon. “Not really, but I mean we've just been here so long everything else is kinda a blur?”

“The Rules, the seclusion, all the weird shit! The symbols, the sigils, the Bells, _They_. We don't learn history and we can't leave the grounds!” Stiles throws up his hands again, not even trying to stop his tears. “I think we're in a fucking cult, or some alternate dimension! Things are not _right_ here. I feel like I'm fucking going crazy. No one else seems freaked out but me.” His jaw wobbles, and the already broken pieces of Scott's heart crumble just a little more. “I've got this fucking badge and I _know_ it means something, but I cannot remember what.”

Stiles cries his frustration and stomps his feet into the dirt. Scott lets him have this outlet for as long as he can allow him, and then he walks Stiles back to Shardpoint.

It's almost time for their final meal, but Stiles waves him off when Scott starts leading them to the cafeteria.

“I'm gonna lay down,” he mumbles. Wearily, he rubs at his eyes again. He winces when the bandages rub against the already abraded skin. “I'll see you later.”

Scott goes to dinner alone and eats quietly with Isaac and Boyd. He looks around the cafeteria as his thoughts wander, and locks eyes with Danny Mahealani. Danny's sitting in his normal chair, but the seat beside him is vacant.

After dinner, the First Ring tolls. The Ring system is used mainly to keep the students aware of the time, though Stiles is sure there's something more sinister going on. The First Ring sounds at eight o'clock, the Second Ring sounds at nine o'clock, and the Third Ring sounds at ten o'clock. Bed by the Third Ring.

Scott finishes his homework up until the Third Ring. When It chimes, Scott puts away his assignments and climbs in bed. He's the last to turn off his lamp.

The moon is full outside their window, and bathes the floor in an eerie white-blue glow. Scott looks at it and contemplates what Stiles had said outside. He tries to think of his life Before, of anything besides Shardpoint, and distressingly he comes up short. It's like there's a wall there, separating what Was and what Is.

He looks to Stiles and watches as he writhes silently in his sleep, right wrist clutched to his chest. In the moonlight Scott can make out the tear tracks on Stiles' face.

As quietly as he can, Scott climbs out of bed and heads for Stiles. He knows the Rules, but he'll bend Them this one. He shimmies inside Stiles' bed and curls up next to him, smiles when Stiles attaches himself like an octopus. He strokes Stiles' hair and hums a little to ease his friend's distress.

Scott looks back over to the window. He can't see out it anymore, but he can see above it. The ironwork circles are still there, only the circle closest to Stiles' bed no longer has its inscription. He blinks a few times, heart ratcheting up into his throat, but the inscription doesn't return.

He climbs out of bed, freaked out. When he's standing in front of it, between Boyd and Stiles' desks, the inscription is where it should be.

Scott climbs back in Stiles' bed, and holds him to his chest. When he finally manages to fall asleep, he dreams of a vacant, decrepit bank with peeling, stained walls, and glowing golden eyes in the darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> Watch me have done the Latin at the beginning wrong, ayee.


End file.
